There was a bit of hidden irony underneath the Veterans Affairs Department scandal Friday, in which its chief resigned amid allegations that the agency's hospitals manipulated waiting lists to mask lengthy delays in getting tens of thousands of veterans medical appointments.

In a speech following the resignation of Eric Shinseki, President Barack Obama said that the computer scheduling systems at many of the nation's government-run veterans hospitals were "broken-down" and stuck in the 1990s. As a reminder: that's the same decade that the Soviet Union collapsed and OJ Simpson was arrested on accusations of double murder.

Obama's revelation comes as his administration seeks defense funding of more than $495 billion (PDF) for the upcoming fiscal year and is spending billions on weapons programs to develop "pack mule" robots, drones, microwave ray guns, Flybots, and even sniper rifles that can hit a target from nearly 4,000 feet away.

But compare the government's willingness to spend on futuristic warfare gear to how it treats its veterans. In Obama's own words:

...in some of these facilities, you've got computer systems for scheduling that date back to the '90s, situations in which one scheduler might have to look at four or five different screens to figure out where there's a slot and where there might be a doctor available, situations in which they're manually passing requests for an appointment over to someone else who's inputting them, right?

So you have, in many cases, old systems, broken-down systems. This is stuff that is imminently fixable, but we've got to know about it. And you know, the big concern that I've got and what I'm going to be interested in finding out is, you know, how is it that in a number of these facilities, if in fact you have veterans who are waiting too long for an appointment, that that information didn't surface sooner, so that we could go ahead and fix it.

One last point I want to make on this: When veterans have gotten access to the system, the health care itself that they are receiving has gotten high marks from our veterans service organizations and the veterans themselves. So I think it’s important to keep in mind that what the review indicates so far, at least, is that there have been great strides made in the actual care provided to veterans. The challenge is getting veterans into the door, particularly for their first appointment, in some cases, and where they don’t have an established relationship with a doctor, and they’re not in the system.

Just days ago, however, the Pentagon showed off Plan X and its experiments with Oculus Rift for the "mega man battle network" of cyberwarfare. All the while, military tech prevents thousands of vets from making an appointment to get medical and mental care.

David Kravets / The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper.